CHESTERTOWN, MD—On Wednesday, Oct. 16, art and science collaborate in “Sensing Change: How Art and Science Work to Communicate Environmental Change,” a lecture by historian and scholar Jody Roberts. The event is sponsored by the College’s chapter of the scientific honor society Sigma Xi and the SANDBOX initiative. It will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Litrenta Lecture Hall, Toll Science Center, and is free and open to the public. 

Roberts, a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer, comes to Washington College from the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) in Philadelphia, where he serves as director of the Center for Contemporary History and Policy. In “Sensing Change,” he will discuss his involvement and experience with a current CHF exhibit of the same name. 

Roberts says art can help people better understand the environmental threat of climate change by making it more visually and personally meaningful.  “Through the construction of a physical art exhibition, public art installations, and materials such as artist interviews and oral histories with scientists, we aim to show that a different kind of conversation about topics such as climate change might be possible,” he says. 

Announced in spring of 2013, “SANDBOX: The Washington College Program for Creativity and the Environment,” explores our aesthetic relation to the natural world, and examines the social and ecological issues at its core. The program, which is funded by a Mellon Foundation grant, invites faculty members and students from the natural and social sciences to work with those in the arts—music, art, dance and literature—and learn together through creative challenges. SANDBOX also hosts visiting visual or performing artists who come to campus to work with students on creative projects focused on the environment.  The first visiting artist, sculptor John Ruppert, is in residence for the fall 2013 semester.